1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the collection and correlation over time of private viewing usage data.
2. Description of the Related Art
The collection, storage and processing of viewing usage data provides valuable information to multi-channel video distributors. By understanding its customers' viewing habits and programming preferences, a distributor can increase revenues by offering them more desirable programming and more interesting advertisements. Furthermore, other companies (such as advertisers, programming providers and television networks) are willing to pay for audience measurement data, representing additional revenue sources for the distributor.
The privacy of customers is of paramount concern when handling viewing usage data. A company has legal and ethical obligations to honor its customers' wishes with respect to the privacy of their viewing usage data. One privacy policy model places customers into three categories: those who specifically request that their viewing usage data not be used (“opt-out”), those who specifically allow use of their viewing usage data (“opt-in”), and those who have stated no preference (“opt-neutral”).
A company is free to use incentives to encourage its customers to adopt “opt-in” status; however, without any incentives, the majority of customers will end up in the “opt-neutral” category. While laws in different regions of the country differ, one may assume that viewing usage data for “opt-neutral” customers may be used for aggregate viewing usage analyses only, and is required to be stored in a way that prevents an individual customer's viewing usage data to be extracted at any time.
The simplest way to meet this requirement is to remove the customer identifier prior to storage of the data. However, by doing this, the data cannot be correlated across multiple data samples received over time.
For example, assume that the viewing usage data sent at the end of Week 1 shows that 10% of “opt-neutral” customers viewed the first episode of a new series the previous night and viewing usage data sent at the end of Week 2 shows that 15% of “opt-neutral” customers viewed the second episode of that new series during Week 2. If the viewing usage data is not indexed by a customer identifier, then the distributor cannot determine how many customers viewed both episodes, or what types of customers viewed the first but not the second episode.
Consequently, there is need for the ability to collect and correlate private viewing usage data over time, while maintaining the privacy of customers. The present invention satisfies that need.